The Golden Spike National Historic Site - Utah

We drove from Zion NP up to Ogden to spend the night before heading up to Idaho and decided the next morning to swing by the Golden Spike (GS) site before going north. (Oh, the Interstate from south of Provo up to Ogden is brutal! 90 miles of city traffic.) I thought it would be worth our time, being so close, to visit such a historical site.

The GS site is where the two trains met that made for the first transcontinental railroad in the United States back in 1869. "May 10, 1869 the Union and Central Pacific Railroads joined their rails at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory and forged the destiny of a nation. Golden Spike National Historic Site shares the stories of the people and settings that define the completion of the first Transcontinental Railroad." 

A bit of history: Both east and west trains had a difficult time. The train that started east from Sacramento, California had to go through the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the winter. Get this:  Among the extreme conditions that the workers had to survive were the unbearable snow storms.  During the winter of 1866-1867, there were 44 blizzards while the building of the Summit Tunnel proceeded.  The storms were anywhere from a short squall to a two week blizzard, with between one-quarter of an inch and ten feet of accumulation of snow.  The heaviest storm started on February 18 at 2 p.m. and lasted until February 22 at 10 p.m. and dropped six feet of snow.  The storm started again five days later and lasted until March 2, with ten feet of total accumulation.  These storms often blocked tunnel entrances and slowed work considerably.  It took one half of the crew (4,500 men) to keep the track shoveled.  Avalanches buried alive laborers, both American and Chinese.  Throughout the snowy conditions, the workers averaged only eight inches of track per day, blasting through solid rock.

Eight inches a day!

Now, the train that started west from Omaha had blizzards, Indian raids that killed the surveyors and graders, floods, extreme heat....amazing that either train made the final journey!

http://www.nps.gov/gosp/index.htm

To get to the GS site, you head north about 18 miles then turn west and go about 50 miles or so. At first, the land is green and agricultural but soon evolves into scrub cattle land. Eventually you get to the "middle of nowhere". And that's where you'll find the Visitor's Center.

If you look REAL closely, you'll see some building in the distance. That's where the GS site is located!

...almost there....

Made it !

The anniversary (114th?) of the meeting of the two trains was to be held the Saturday after we were there so the locomotives were practicing and I got to take some photos. The 119, which came from the east and the 60 (the Jupiter) which came from the west and then they came close until they were almost touching.

Locomotives actually looked this way in 1869. Not until the turn of the century did they start to go to flat black.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_No._119

There are all kinds of signals that the trains make to indicate what they're doing or are about to do. For instance, one short blast means Stop. The 119 pulls up to where it's going to stop and makes the one blast "STOP". Then the 60 pulled up to it and they had the celebration.

Gorgeous aren't they?

Quite a site...and so colorful!

The ceremony for the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869; completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad. At center left, Samuel S. Montague, Central Pacific Railroad, shakes hands with Grenville M. Dodge, Union Pacific Railroad (center right). By Andrew J. Russell

The center had a great railroad exhibit illustrating the techniques necessary to build the railroads.

A good book to read if you're interested. The park rangers like this book more than the one they're required to read to work at the park....more informative.

While talking to some of the park rangers they said, "Some of the darker parts of the railroad were the way both men, Stanford and Durant... especially Durant, scammed the US government throughout the endeavor. This is one of the main reasons there is so little historical record of the entire production of the railroads...no one wanted to write down what was really happening. The making of the transcontinental railroad makes for some very interesting historical reading."

A replica of the golden spike. The "Last Spike" now lies in the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.

I went in alone on this visit. Kim stayed in the coach but consented to wave to her adoring audience!

For more reading....

http://www.nps.gov/gosp/index.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad

Hope you enjoyed this one...kinda long but very interesting....as history always is.

Kim and Steve

Zion National Park - Gawking is allowed

Zion National Park is one amazing place. Whereas, at Bryce, you are looking from above down at the colorful rock formations, at Zion you are inside a canyon looking up 2,000 feet to the towering cliffs above.

This was our view out our coach front when we woke each morning.

Many many hikes in the park....the best way to experience the beauty.

2 mile Riverwalk Trail.

If you're a geologist or like rocks, this place is for you.

3D Model at the Visitor's Center showing the canyon.

Like we said earlier....gawking is allowed.

...and beautiful springtime flowers

Now...this is just (just?) the canyon part of Zion....you can drive through a mile-long tunnel to get to the eastern part where the rock formations are fantastic.

This is Checkerboard Mesa.

Close up

Even more of a closeup

..just to show you how large it is...

...and Kim

All around the base of Checkerboard Mesa is the fine sand from it. It's made of sandstone obviously but look how very fine the sand grains are next to a piece of sandstone.

So much of this part of the park has these layers upon layers of twisted sandstone.

After hiking up Watchman's Trail, I made a movie but, in order to get a good conversion, it's about 16MBs. If you want to view it, you can go to YouTube to view it. It's worth it to get a good overall feeling of the park.

http://youtu.be/R8TwOUbIhdA


We were there for 5 days and still were amazed every time we looked upwards. Wonderful visit.

More photos can be found here....

https://plus.google.com/photos/100376105788369441882/albums/5874501906303789761

and, from our last visit...there are about 135 photos here....

https://plus.google.com/photos/100376105788369441882/albums/5660747571069754625

Kim and Steve

Bryce Canyon - Still Magnificent

After Capitol Reef NP, we headed over here to Bryce Canyon NP. We'd been here before, in October of 2011, but knew we had to see it again.

Rather than bore you all over again with the details....Bryce is so unique, the photos tell the story themselves. Oh, these spires are called Hoo-Doos. For all of you geology buffs...we've put the explanation of their formation at the very bottom.

This is the highest viewpoint in the park. We were gasping for air!

Early one day, I took off on the Queen's Gate hike down to the bottom of the valley to be among the Hoo-Doos. These are from the bottom looking up.

So many contrails daily shooting across the sky. I remember so well looking out the window wondering, "What's down there?" ...and now we're "there". What a hoot.

Taken with my HTC 8X Windows phone. 

One of our days, we went on this Mossy Cave hike....somewhat easy...about 200 feet elevation gain but there was a great waterfall at the end.

While Kim took a breather, I climbed up and above the waterfall and posed for her.

In the 1890s, the settlers dug this channel to get water out of the mountains down to Tropic valley where they had crops. 14 miles long! Took them 2 years.

Kim's Sherpa getting water to put on our face and arms for cooling.

Shhhhhh.....The Master Photographer caught in action!

The view from underneath the waterfall.

Bryce is unlike any other place you've visited. It should be on your Must-See list.

Kim and Steve


Formational Process:

Hoodoos are formed by two weathering processes that continuously work together in eroding the edges of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. The primary weathering force at Bryce Canyon is frost wedging. Here we experience over 200 freeze/thaw cycles each year. In the winter, melting snow, in the form of water, seeps into the cracks and freezes at night. When water freezes it expands by almost 10%, bit by bit prying open cracks, making them ever wider in the same way a pothole forms in a paved road.

In addition to frost wedging, what little rain we get here also sculpts the hoodoos. Even the crystal clear air of Bryce Canyon creates slightly acidic rainwater. This weak carbonic acid can slowly dissolve limestone grain by grain. It is this process that rounds the edges of hoodoos and gives them their lumpy and bulging profiles. Where internal mudstone and siltstone layers interrupt the limestone, you can expect the rock to be more resistant to the chemical weathering because of the comparative lack of limestone. Many of the more durable hoodoos are capped with a special kind of magnesium-rich limestone called dolomite. Dolomite, being fortified by the mineral magnesium, dissolves at a much slower rate, and consequently protects the weaker limestone underneath it in the same way a construction worker is protected by his/her hardhat.

Rain is also the chief source of erosion (the actual removal of the debris). In the summer, monsoon type rainstorms travel through the Bryce Canyon region bringing short duration high intensity rain.

http://www.nps.gov/brca/naturescience/hoodoos.htm

http://www.nps.gov/brca/index.htm